3
Alarie
“Missed you last night,” he said, lying next to me in his large, canopied bed. He was propped up against the wooden headboard with only a corner of the white sheet covering his naked body.
“Oh. Yeah. I’m sure it was a good time,” I said unconvincingly, turning my face to him as I lay naked on my stomach.
“Where’d you go off to?” he asked directly.
“Bar Louie. Then Luke’s,” I responded, not feeling the need to provide any further explanation.
I stayed at Luke’s often these days, but not for the reasons Stefan assumed. Luke and I actually had not had sex…yet. Last night, Luke and I didn’t even so much as kiss. After Rhett and Lauren had left, I’d been happy to curl under Luke’s arm and fall asleep without pressing for anything more. But Stefan didn’t need to know that.
I rose from Stefan’s bed, looking for my clothes. Then I remembered he had started stripping off my clothing as soon as I had walked through his front door that morning.
“Come over tonight?” he asked tentatively. “I’m going to get done a little earlier than normal.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I responded noncommittally.
A brief flicker of exasperation crossed Stefan’s face. I never stayed the night with him. At first, I think he enjoyed how aloof I was, but after a while he began to press me to stay. But no matter how late it was, I always got out of his bed and made my way back to my place. I would often show up the next morning and climb right back into his bed, like I had this morning. But I never stayed the night.
This was what drove Stefan crazy about me, according to him. But I knew it was also what made him crazy about me. A guy like Stefan, who was so used to women throwing themselves at him on and off the dance floor, was appreciative that I always kept him guessing.
“I should probably get going too,” he said. “I have to meet up with Nina soon. I’m to entertain her and Gloria again this afternoon,” he said, trying to sound put out.
Ah, there it is.
I’d been waiting for Stefan’s parry to my early departure from his gig last night and my mention of my night with Luke.
Mentioning the fact that he was now consort to Lady Nina Kearing, after he had abandoned Lady Tragon’s service, was his go-to move. Stefan brought up Nina any time he felt I was getting a leg up on him. He would allude to the fact that he was consort if he thought it would score him a couple of points in the game he and I constantly played. I thought it was ironic, given the fact that he was actually quite sensitive about the whispers around the High Court that he had simply traded being whore for House Tragon for being whore to House Kearing.
This was the game we played, but unlike the game I once played with Jay, I was unsure that the game between Stefan and me had ever been fun. We had never agreed to be exclusive. In fact, that was an impossibility given Stefan’s role as consort to House Kearing. But that did not stop us from engaging in a war of petty jealousies. We took turns trying to hurt each other while pretending we were not doing exactly that. Our entire relationship was just a perpetual settling of scores, even though neither of us could even recall who’d scored the first point.
But before the games started, it had been fun with Stefan. Committed to sabotaging my relationship with Jay, I had moved from Jay’s bed to Stefan’s almost immediately. It was the only way I could figure out how to not end up back with Jay. I knew if I didn’t really fuck it up with Jay, I would just go back to him, and he would take me back. I needed to not think about Jay and the way things went down. The way I had practically ripped his heart out in return for everything he had given me and everything he had done for me.
I reached the hallway between the front door and his bedroom and bent down to pick up my bra. Stefan beat me to it. He stood before me, my white silky bra hanging from a single finger, a grin on his face.
“I’ll trade you,” he said playfully. “Your bra for your panties?” He gestured to the matching white thong I had already managed to find and put on.
“Well, that would be kind of counterproductive, don’t you think? Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I asked.
He isn’t as irresistible as he thinks he is, I thought. Well, not entirely, I conceded taking in the view of Stefan wearing nothing but the freckles speckled across his nose. Not without a guitar in his hand.
I had been taken by Stefan’s voice and his hands on a guitar from the first moment I laid eyes on him. My draw to him was not purely organic, however. Early on, Stefan had admitted that his musical skills were enhanced by his magical abilities. As a performer with a light affinity, his magic enabled him to make any crowd beholden to him—he could sing, dance, play an instrument, or tell a story and captivate any room full of people. Stefan had admitted that his abilities had diminished as the magic continued to dull, but he didn’t think his particular form of magic was as impacted as others.
“Alarie, stay. Oh, won’t you stay awhile for me, Alarie?” Stefan sang in his honeyed voice as he pulled me back toward the bed.
“That’s not fair,” I protested, but I gave in to his tugging, falling on top of him on the bed.
* * * *
Lying back in Stefan’s bed thirty minutes later, I thought of how he had talked, no sang, me back to bed. I rose and got dressed. Stefan didn’t interfere this time. But something tugged at the back of my mind.
“Didn’t you say you spent a lot of time up north last year?” I asked, remembering what he had told me during our first conversation months ago. Something about being up north too much for his liking.
“Yeah. Too much time,” he confirmed.
“Like where?” I asked, still not sure what was nagging me.
“You name it. I pretty much did a tour of every northern house.”
“House Patton?” I asked after Lady Vitruvian’s maiden House. It was the first name that came to my mind.
“Yep,” he replied.
And then what was bugging me all clicked into place. I had never figured out how Cole Tragon had convinced those lesser fae to terrorize Lord Garaud and his family. High Lord Dumont and Cass had disclaimed having anything to do with it and had expressed befuddlement at what had come over the group of lesser fae. But Luke had told me that everyone was listening to music that night at Lord Garaud’s before everything went wrong.
“House Garaud?” I asked, unable to keep some of my suspicion out of my voice.
Stefan’s hands stopped on the buttons of his blue pants. He looked up at me, and the flicker of emotion on his face said it all.
“Stefan…” I said, disgusted. I was glad that I had managed to find and put on all my clothes.
“You didn’t,” I whispered. “You—” I stopped myself, realizing that I shouldn’t say anything more. But it was too late. I’d already said too much. He’d seen the look of disgust on my face.
“Alarie, Alarie,” he tsked, and his perpetually cocky smirk turned cruel.
It was like I was looking at a different man, as if he had flipped a switch and turned on a new personality. Even the way he moved, normally cocksure but smooth, now had cruel, sharp edges to it.
“You couldn’t just shut up and hide behind that pretty face of yours. Too smart for your own damn good, girl,” he said, advancing toward me.
I backed up cautiously, not wanting to turn my back on him. I felt around with my hands extended behind my back until I bumped into a door frame.
“You caught me,” he said theatrically with a slow clap of his hands. “Now, what are you going to do about it?” he asked, mockingly.
My eyes darted toward the front door.
“Oh, no. I don’t think so,” he teased, with a wicked smile. “I kept you from leaving once today already,” he bragged. “Although you were harder to convince than Lord Belford, I have no doubt I can do it again.”
He began to hum. Its rhythm didn’t feel sweet or seductive like the song he sang to me before. But I could feel its pull, nonetheless. I froze, despite my overwhelming desire to leave. I had to stop him. I had to break his concentration.
“Lord Belford?” I asked, although I thought I already knew.
Cole Tragon had been vouched for the night Lord Belford was murdered. It seemed that Stefan had done Cole’s dirty work for him.
“I lured him right into that hallway. He didn’t even see the blade coming,” Stefan bragged.
He was talking, which meant he wasn’t humming or singing. I started edging toward the door again.
“I didn’t realize you were Cole’s lapdog, too,” I spat.
“Cole was an idiot. I knew it, and his mother did too. He proved that with how he handled things with you. I had to handle Lord Belford, or Cole would have gotten us all caught. The idiot would have stabbed him with his own knife and left a bloodied monogrammed handkerchief as proof,” he sneered.
“Don’t worry, though. I won’t be nearly as rough with you as Cole was. We have a place up north, the real north. It may be a little cold for your taste, but I’ll stash you away somewhere; somewhere they can’t find you—”
Free of his compulsion, I lunged for the door. Stefan was ready for my desperate move. He lunged after me. A surge of fear rose within me. I had failed to put enough distance between us. He was going to catch me. But before his hands could lock onto me, he fell back like he had run into an invisible wall. He fell to his ass, rolling into the wall behind him. I didn’t look back as I heard the thunk of his head against the wall. I was already out the door, running barefooted with all the speed I could muster.
I reached a crowd of people in the main hall of House Kearing and stopped running. I needed to blend in, not cause a scene. I kept checking over my shoulder for Stefan until I reached the archway of the manor and then I started sprinting again. I didn’t know where I was running until I got there. I crashed into Luke as he was walking out of the front door of his manor.
“Al?” He grabbed me.
I tried to push past him, shaking and gasping.
“Al?“ he said again. “ALARIE!”
He never called me by my full name. That got my attention. I looked up at him, held tight in his arms. I could tell that we were surrounded by one of his invisible protective shields.
“What happened, Al? Are you okay?” he asked, concerned. He pulled me into his house.
“It’s Stefan. He—”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” he snarled, releasing me and turning to the door.
“No. No, no, no, Luke,” I said, hysterical. He couldn’t leave me.
“It’s okay, Al. You’re with me. You’re safe. It’s okay,” he reassured me, encircling me in his arms again.
I took several deep breaths, my chest expanding and falling as he held me until my breaths came out normally once more.
“Luke, Stefan killed—”
“He killed? What are you talking about? Who did he kill, Al?” Luke asked, his strong hands grasping my arms and pulling my gaze up to his.
“He killed Lord Belford, Luke. He confessed to me. And that whole thing with Lord Garaud’s family, he’s responsible for that too.”
Luke stepped to the door, barricading it with a shield, then added to the protective layer he had already enclosed around our bodies.
“And then he said he was going to kidnap me, take me somewhere. I don’t know where. Somewhere up north.” I felt like I was babbling, so I just stopped talking, focusing on taking deep breaths instead.
“It’s okay, Al. You’re safe. I won’t let anyone ever hurt you again,” he promised, taking me in his arms corded in muscle once more.
He wrapped a hand around my head, securing me to his chest, and I melted into him. I was usually so good at keeping my tears at bay, but I could feel them coming. I didn’t want to cry. I already felt so weak and vulnerable. But Luke held me tighter, wrapping an arm around my lower back and planting a soft, sweet kiss on the top of my head. I came unglued. I started crying and didn’t stop until the front of his light blue button-down was soaked with my tears.